As my little family soap opera continues to unfold, abate, get dull and tedious, then recycle, many people are sharing their own stories of adjustment with their grown children. One reports that her kids like her but hate each other, which is painful but probably not as painful as it might be if they, like mine, had bonded over their dislike of her. Another says her kids aren't on drugs (probably), but in their twenties, one with a child, and all still living with her. She feels ambivalent about the household, but loves the granddaughter and is glad she's there. One tells me that I was the mother she always wanted to be, that her kids didn't finish college, and she likes them okay, but really depends on her friends for diversion, support, connection. She says my kids, and I, should be goddamned grateful that they're educated, healthy and have JOBS, and they should stop whining and I should stop caring if they do.
My friend Cathy tells me that the only time she ever hit her kids was when the younger, ruder one was 18, and she slapped her, hard, across the face. Cathy has never forgotten it, but has never for a minute felt guilty about it. Those of us who have lived with teens understand the impulse, and I'm a little envious. I wish I'd had the nerve to do something like that when confronted with unspeakable rudeness and disrespect. I might -- MIGHT -- not be in the spot I'm in today. I told Cathy how she was a kind of hero to me, and she told me the story of her next door neighbor -- it's a cautionary tale.
When the neighbor's kids were teens they were unbelievably snotty to her. It was relentless and steadily worsened over time. Cathy remembers feeling terribly inadequate because the neighbor mother was unfailingly loving and patient with the little bastards, ignoring the slights and insults, always encouraging and rewarding their occasional good behavior, while Cathy was short-tempered and, finally, see above, physical when one of her kids mouthed off to her.
Finally all the neighborhood kids left home, and one evening, after the neighbor's daughter had been arrested in Argentina on drug charges and then released and deported back to the US, the girl went on Nightline to talk about it, and to say that the whole incident was her mother's fault. The neighbor's son, after being sprung from drug rehab for the nth time, came to his mother's house and tried to kill her when she refused him money for more drugs. Failing in the matricide, the kid ran to his father's house (father had divorced the mother when he found a younger version of her) for sanctuary, and his father, a lawyer, waited three days before turning him in.
Now, my mother urged us always to take the high road in relationship squabbles, and I am doing my level best to proceed as she would have, but I gotta say tales like that one give me pause. Not that any of my kids are completely nuts like that, but there are times....
And another friend this morning said what's up? I'm not supposed to be thinking about them anymore. I can only say it's got to be a process, that it doesn't begin and end with a decision. I'm thinking in terms of a wound -- a skinned knee for example -- that scabbed over too early and became pussy and inflamed; it takes a while, and a lot of antibiotics, topical as well as systemic, to fix it. The Chinese say we heal from the bottom up and the inside out, so just getting the pus out is a major accomplishment. I haven't yet found the appropriate, metaphorical antibiotic cream.
Too much? Sorry, but the metaphor seems apt this morning.
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amazing!
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